God Repurposes Your Brokenness
One of the very best things about God is that He loves a good repurposing story. We are broken sinners that live in a broken world, and our God knows that because He made us and He walks with us through those times when everything feels like it’s crashing down. God wants to heal us when we have been hurt, and then many times He uses the hurt to help heal others.
In her book When You Don’t Like Your Story, author Sharon Jaynes talks about the hurt cycle and how it comes to a close when we use our scarred pasts to help others find peace. She writes, “Yes, we balk at the bumps and bruises of life, we shrink back at the shattering of the heart, but when we take a step to use what we’ve gone through to help someone else, I believe healing comes full circle. Resurrection power transforms our stories into a beacon of hope.” God so often uses our past hardship or even smaller bumps in the road to glorify Him by helping others struggling with similar stories. She calls this hope ‘biblical hope,’ and defines it as, “tethering what we know about God’s past faithfulness to the future. Biblical hope is a certainty that our ultimate future rests in God’s capable and loving hands. It is an assurance that the invisible God is faithful and has a good plan in my visible life.”
“Yes, we balk at the bumps and bruises of life, we shrink back at the shattering of the heart, but when we take a step to use what we’ve gone through to help someone else, I believe healing comes full circle. Resurrection power transforms our stories into a beacon of hope.”
While we struggle to find purpose in pain while we are amidst trials, once we get through them and use them we look back and see God’s hand in it all. He perfectly orchestrates our stories even when we go through rough patches. Our God is not small and unable to use immense sorrow and suffering. On the contrary, our God is huge, vast, awesome, and fully capable of taking our brokenness and making something new and beautiful. Revelation 21 talks about the new heaven and the new earth that God will make when this earth passes away and Satan is defeated forever. Just like that new heaven and new earth, God can make you new by ridding you of the shackles of your old life and giving you new hope and purpose through the blood of His Son.
Your story, no matter how awful it may be, can be used as a powerful weapon against the enemy when you let God use it to show others how they, too, can be made new. Jaynes says, “Your past is something you did or had done to you; it is not who you are.” God takes the past and uses it for His glory time and time again. Jaynes points out how much our God loves paradoxes and writes, “It’s a paradox that the worst chapter can become our greatest victories, but isn’t that the way of Scripture? Jesus died like a criminal and now rules as a king. God temporarily blinded Saul physically so that he could see spiritually. Paul was chained to a guard to learn how to live free. I die to self in order to live for God. What I considered the most pitiful parts of my story I now consider the most powerful.”
There is nothing you have done or have had done to you that God can’t use for good. No one is beyond His reach, and there is a plan behind the scenes that you know nothing about. Trust that the God who will one day make everything new, is not going to forget about making you new, too. Jaynes ends her book with lyrics from the song Graves Into Gardens. She writes, “God changes graves into gardens. Mourning into dancing. Ashes into beauty. Seaways into highways. Rivers into roadways. Dry bones into armies. Shame into glory. A cross into a crown.” God can change your worst chapters into your greatest victories if you let Him. Trust that you are loved and valuable. You are not your past, and the God of the universe is holding you in His hand ready to heal your brokenness.
“God changes graves into gardens. Mourning into dancing. Ashes into beauty. Seaways into highways. Rivers into roadways. Dry bones into armies. Shame into glory. A cross into a crown.”
My prayer is that you are able to experience the great joy and relief that comes when you let the Lord make you new. I am praying that you will no longer be weighed down by shame and regret, but that instead you will allow God to make your worst chapters your greatest victories and find delight in Him and His deep, deep love for you.
